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And so, my dears, we are shortly to part. Only once more will I gaze over your willing, shiny faces; your little ears trembling with excitement as you dunk another doughnut in the communal cappuccino. Take care not to spill hot liquid in your laps, my lovelies, for my words are not yet done.

For today I wish to speak to you of words which are not yet done, or, to put it another way, my Work In Progress. Not, as some people are prone to call it, my ‘current’ work in progress, because if it wasn’t current, then it wouldn’t be in progress, would it? Ah, I see you cannot answer, for your mouths are full of doughnut. Just nod, and we shall move on.

My ex-work in progress, Slightly Foxed, which was the novel following hot on the heels of Reversing Over Liberace, became accepted for publication. The lavish and lovely people at Samhain decided that a tale of a single mother working in a bookshop and trying hard to fall in love with the wrong man was suitable for their lists.

So now I was faced with the task of writing another book. And, oh my glossy-faced youngsters, I had ideas! A woman running an evening class for wannabe writers, a woman moving with her young daughter to a crumbly old cottage in the country, vampires attempting an interdimensional take-over, foiled by a council worker with a sidekick with a passion for filing!

OK, only the last of these got written. It’s called ‘Dead Run’ and I love it very much, although it’s been sidelined for the past little while. I remain optimistic of its chances in the big wide world, once it’s been spruced up. But it is a very different proposition from Liberace and Slightly Foxed. And I needed to write another book featuring ordinary people falling in love. Dead Run is all very well when you want drama and tension and reminders about the importance of keeping your filing up to date, but I found I was pining for another character-driven story. One less about people getting throats ripped out and more about the tragedy of meeting the man you most desire in the world whilst having your dress tucked into the back of your knickers.

And so I embarked on such a tale. Wilfully I have given it the working title ‘Beethoven Complex’. Oh, such a struggle, my sparkly friends!

The story ground to a halt at the 50,000 word mark. I went back and rewrote the last chapter. Twice. And still I couldn’t see why it wouldn’t move forward. The planning was done, the story-arcs all in place and moving, the characters were developed and the major plot elements were all going up and down like pistons. But each time I opened the Word document which contained them all I’d find myself wandering off, cleaning out my ears with old sweet wrappers and picking fluff out of my mouse. I didn’t want to write.

And then, one day, it came to me. Well, I say day, it was more like two o clock in the morning of one sleepless night. I was resigned to being awake and trying to find things for my mind to do, like running through my wardrobe to pick the outfit I’d want to be wearing when Johnny Depp finally turns up to whisk me away. (I thought I’d go for the red and black dress. Not the trousers, Johnny wants to be able to see my legs, and the other skirt is too skimpy. I don’t want him to think I’m a tart, do I?)

My heroine, Jemima, was born into a rich and famous family, from which she has run away to make her own life. Well, so far, so custardy. Only, as I’d continued, I’d found myself with less and less sympathy for Jemima. Particularly when she meets up with the hero of the piece, one Ben Davies, an ex-rock guitarist with a number of behavioural peculiarities. My concept for the novel was that the two of them were hiding from life, and could only start to really live when they got together and overcame their particular hang-ups.

But, oh, the whingeing got on my nerves! Jemima had run away from more money than most of us could decently imagine (and, in the immortal words of Han Solo, ‘I can imagine a lot’). And she was struggling to make ends meet with her jewellery business! Oh, boo-bloody-hoo. Get over yourself, girl, ask your parents for a loan, and stop complaining!

And there, in essence, was the problem. Jemima was an unlikeable cow. Not completely unlikeable, not like Saskia, the villainess of the book, with her sarky put-downs and her walking-wallet husband, but just enough that I couldn’t carry on with her story. Deep down, I didn’t believe she deserved one.

Now my task is to change enough of the story to make Jemima likeable without making Ben’s problems (he’s a real tortured hero, you’ll love him) seem overblown. So I’ve decided to go back to the beginning and change her backstory, making her come from a council estate in Bristol (for all you non-Brits out there, Bristol is a city in the South West, with some very deprived areas). And this time her problems would only be made worse by going home.

And I must confess to having that tickle of excitement back. You know the one, when you’ve got a story in your head and you can’t wait to get it down on paper and see how it all turns out. Sometimes the only solution to a writing problem is a major re-write and there’s no getting round it. Sometimes, in fact, a whole character is wrong for the story he or she is inhabiting. But the lovely fact is that in writing nothing is wasted. There is always room for a well-rounded character, even if it’s in the next book, or the one after that. My ‘poor little rich girl’ will find her place somewhere else, and the new Jemima is more driven, more angsty and a lot more likeable as a result.

Oh, look at the time! Aren’t we due a Viking invasion about now? I’d better potter off, dust down the old horned helmet and try to remember how to do ‘coy virgin’ before they arrive. Toodle-pip old fruits, until tomorrow!